in your opening comments, plus State agencies as well. We had a 

 situation with this particular population with the lead Feder^ 

 agency of perhaps not making up its mind as to what role it would 

 play in a population both spreading naturally into the Southern 

 Um^ted States and a need for an intercept. And for that reason, 

 there was a bit of some difficulty at the beginmng as the popu- 

 lation moved into the United States. , j ..u 4. „.^ r.ff^r- 

 On page 7, I off'er some considerations. You asked that we otter 

 some of OUT comments as to what the future may be. I would hke 



'^'^SoftCia^^^^^^^ problem^ with the Africanized bees 



we need Federal involvement beyond the current level There is a 

 nun^ber of the agencies that are hsted, as you indicated in your 

 opemng comments, that are now involved, and of course, there is 

 a need for better coordination. There is the need for both research 

 extension activities, and educational efforts with the Africanized 

 bee As I indicated, all of these need to be expanded 



The target audience includes both our industry beekeepers and 

 those that benefit from our industry, those crop producers that 

 need pollination services, but also the State, county and mumcipal 

 authorities, both elected and non-elected, that must dea^^ with this 

 alien introduced species, and, of course, the general Public that 

 must now face accidental encounters with the defensive behav- 



ir^Td that is the stinsfing — of Africanized bees. 



A Wgh priority as^^ s^ee it, for dealing with Mricanized bees is 

 to reduce the man-assisted movement of the Afncamzed bee ge- 

 netic material while protecting the availability of honeybee colomes 

 for pomnation of crops and allowing beekeepers a reasonable oppor- 

 tum^ty to pursue their business or hobby interests This does, in- 

 deed represent a formidable challenge m contradiction to how the 

 sftuation Sthe parasitic bee mites and tracheal mites and mtro- 

 duction ofTther alien insect species, some of which you mentioned 

 in vour opening statement, have functioned. 



Possible porti of entry and isolated geographical enclaves such as 

 the Islands of Hawaii and Pueri:o Rico need continued interdiction 

 efforts and continued destruction of accidental invaders. This has 

 se^ed a useful purpose in the past, and we need to have this con- 

 tf^ed Shice the population of Africanized bees is both external to 

 our shores'and als'o 'currently >^thin the three States ^^^^^^^^^ 

 and likelv to continue to spread into additional U.b territory, tne 

 possibilities of man-assisted spread of the genetic matenal-mdeed 

 thf whole population-has expanded, therefore making the task 



"^ We S Federal assistance in our efforts to help monitor the 

 spread of the Africanized bee population within th^U.S There are 

 a number of agencies that are currently doing that. We have a 

 problem with this population in ID; that is identification of the 

 bee USDA ARS assists in Africanized bee identification and per- 

 forms a service of ID intercepts of the APHIS intercepts. As I indi- 

 cated earlie? USDA APHIS initially assisted with trapping swarms 

 af monitoring stations in south Texas-they established a f^rb; 

 lengthy line of stations at 1-mile ^^^tervals-but has now ^th 

 drawn It is unclear, at least to many of us outside of the l^ederal 

 Gov^mmeS, Xt role APHIS would assume after the Afncamzed 



